


Sugaring Season

by nimmieamee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 1x05 Coda, F/F, ancestral murder, sinister parents, the long-lost maple fortune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 03:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9957284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: If they're all heirs to the maple syrup fortune, then any one of their families could have killed Jason.Feat. eight potential maple syrup heirs, one long-lost fortune, one magical carnival, five thousand acres of haunted wood, and quite a few relationships that need working out.





	1. Chapter 1

All things considered, the snakes-in-boxes part of her mother's explanation wasn't the wildest thing Veronica heard that night.

"I'm sorry," Veronica said, after a moment's pause. "Maple syrup fortune?"

"Technically," her mother said, "It's a maple sap fortune. Syrup is just one of the many products one can derive from the sap."

Veronica felt like her mother should break into a smile here, to show this was all a ridiculous joke. But Hermione's voice was as focused and serious as if she were confessing sins to a priest.

"There's also maple candy. Maple taffy. Maple beer, of course. Maple barbecue sauce--"

"What?" Veronica said.

"And I haven't even gotten to the maple soap," Hermione said. "Maple soap is the single greatest innovation Riverdale has ever produced."

Veronica stared at her. Just behind her mother's head, Smithers dusted the mantle and nodded along with a smile on his face, like he had endless good things to say about the maple soap industry if only given the chance.

"So daddy has an old family feud with Clifford Blossom and now plans to use the drive-in land--"

"To establish a new sap processing plant," Hermione said. "One that will drive Clifford out of business."

"Because--"

"Because," Hermione said, " _We_ are the rightful heirs to the maple fortune. Or we would have been, if Townsend Blossom hadn't murdered your father's great-uncle Sullivan--"

"What," Veronica said, "What, what, what."

"With the help of old Zedekiah Cooper--"

"What."

"Not that I hold grudges," Hermione finished. "But, you see, this is all about the maple."

Veronica texted Betty later that night.

_Turns out Cheryl's ancestor killed my ancestor???_

Betty texted back:

_I know._

_How did you know?_

_Oh, wait, I just read that right. YOUR ancestor?_

-

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Kevin Keller tried to sneak out of his house to meet his new boyfriend, and ran directly into his father. 

"Oh, hey," Kevin said. "I thought I heard the sprinklers running. So I came out to investigate because, because we wouldn't want the grass to be _too_ healthy..."

He trailed off. It occurred to him that, unlike Cheryl Blossom or Veronica Lodge, he was spectacularly bad at carrying off dramatic scenes. It had to be because he didn't have the kind of parents who forced you to generate those scenes. He just had good parents. Er. Parent. Just the one, who happened to be the sheriff and who did things like patrol drive-ins in his cop car if he knew Kevin wanted to watch a movie.

"Kev, you need to stay indoors at night," his father said. "No coming out onto the lawn."

"No coming out onto the lawn?" Kevin said. "The lawn is a part of our property. It's within the boundaries of Kellertown, dad."

"There's a killer in this town, and that's bigger than us," said Sheriff Keller. "This thing is big, Kevin. Big."

"Right, because they destroyed your murder board," Kevin said.

Sheriff Keller grasped him by the forearm and drew him inside, then locked the door. Then locked the windows. Then drew the curtains closed, then lifted one curtain to glance warily down the street, then pulled it down again.

"O-kay," Kevin said. 

"I kept the real stuff off the board, and I'm glad I did," Sheriff Keller said. "The Blossoms as good as admitted it to me earlier. This has to do with the fortune."

"Someone wants their spooky, fabulous house?" Kevin tried.

"House?" Sheriff Keller said, looking thrown off. "God no, Kev. Think of the landscaping costs on that place. It's got its own graveyard. No, someone wants the maple fortune."

Oh. Right. Maple was a Riverdale thing.

"The one you always said great-great-grandpa Duncan should have inherited?" Kevin said now.

Sheriff Keller looked briefly, uncharacteristically enraged.

"And he would have inherited it, too," he said. "If Ezekiel Blossom and Clancy Cooper and Redmond Lodge hadn't murdered him for it."

-

At around the same time, at Riverdale High, the pussycats convened for a jam session.

Val was late. She'd been invited to the memorial. The other two hadn't been, not that Josie would have gone if she _had_ been, since Josie thought Penelope Blossom and her husband should be kept on leashes at all times.

Still, it was unusual that the Blossoms had invited Valerie Brown and not Josie McCoy. Josie's mother was the mayor, and Josie had been friends with both twins. Val's parents owned a laundromat, and Val had made out with Jason in a supply closet once. 

"I can't believe you went," Josie said, when Val finally arrived. "But since it was Jason's memorial, I'll excuse the lateness. Don't do it again, though. You had like no reason to be late last night."

Val did have a reason, a broad-shouldered, athletic, red-haired reason. But this wouldn't have been an acceptable reason for Josie. So now she just shrugged.

"Why were you invited, anyway?" Mel said.

"Obviously the Blossoms invited anybody who they think might have killed Jason," Josie said now, because she'd been Cheryl's only real friend since the first grade and so she kind of knew how the Blossoms worked.

"Yeah, but Val?" Mel said.

Josie had to concede that this was bizarre. Val's only crime was having great hair but sharing its particular secret with no one. 

"It's the maple fortune, probably," Val herself said, without explanation.

Josie was so single-minded about practice that she refused to indulge her curiosity right away, because they had music to work on. But when practice was over and the girls were getting ready to go home, she deigned to ask, "Maple fortune?"

"What?" Val said.

"You said the Blossoms invited you because of their maple fortune."

"No," Val said, shaking her head. "I meant the Blossoms suspect me because of the maple fortune. And it isn't theirs."

At the other pussycats' befuddled glances, she sighed.

"The Browns are the rightful heirs to the maple fortune. Or we would be. But the Blossoms and Coopers and Lodges and Kellers wanted it, so they pushed my great-great-great-aunt Keriann out a window."

-

Reggie Mantle had been invited to the memorial, but hadn't gone.

First of all, he'd already had a memorial for Jason, with Moose and the others. Second of all, he'd suspected he was going to lose the captaincy to Archie Andrews, and that was depressing enough without adding to it by thinking about his previous sort-of-but-friend-mostly-rival. Third of all, Reggie actually cared about football, so rather than waste his time doing non-football things, he spent the week working out in his home gym and then going to bed at a reasonable hour.

"Thank god you didn't go," said his brother Oliver, who was holding Reggie's punching bag. 

"Dude, a bulldog says goodbye to his friends in his own way."

"Dude," Oliver said. "Don't play me. I know you know about the fortune."

"What, ours?" Reggie said, not letting up on the punching bag.

"Not _ours_ ," Oliver said, sounding very dismissive of the sizable hair gel company inheritance that had netted the Mantles their house, an apartment in Rotterdam, a beach house on Ana Maria Island, and (somehow) their own coat of arms. 

"Okay, so what fortune?" Reggie said, only half paying attention.

"Pop-pop's family maple fortune, dumbass!"

"Pop-pop's whole family was from Indonesia," Reggie said, still punching. "How did they have a maple fortune?"

"They came here in the 1700s," Oliver said.

"From Indonesia?"

"They had to go back," Oliver said. "Because when they got here, the Blossoms and Coopers and Lodges and Kellers and Browns burned down their house to get to the maple money."

-

Fred Andrews never suspected that he'd only been invited to the memorial because of the maple thing. Neither did Archie. Neither of them was the kind of person to assume they might be suspects in a murder case tangentially connected to a stolen maple syrup fortune.

So they didn't discuss anything like that. Instead Archie reeled out, slowly, his current source of inner conflict: the (what he felt was inherent) tension between music and football. And carefully didn't mention last week's conflict, his relationship with his music teacher.

"What if I want to give my heart to more than one thing?" he asked Fred. "In a perfect world and stuff?"

"Arch," Fred said. "You have a big heart, son. Maybe too big. And I'd love to be the one to guide that heart, but I can't be. You've got to choose your own path."

"I thought so," Archie said glumly.

"It was good of you to give Jason's jersey to Penelope Blossom," Fred told him, hoping to make him smile.

"Yeah," Archie said. "She lost her kid. What was I supposed to do? Act like a jerk?"

"I should hope not," Fred said. "We've had enough jerks in this town to last a lifetime. Enough in this family, too. We've got to put some good into the world, son."

"Right," Archie said, grinning now. "Wouldn't want to be like great-great-great-great-great grandpa Aaron. Half the town ganged up on him, he was so mean."

"Well, yes and no," Fred said. "It was a different time, son. Really they killed him to get at his maple fortune. But his being mean didn't help."

-

So naturally, shortly after Jughead pinned 'The Coopers,' up on the murder board, Veronica appeared and they had to add 'The Lodge family.' Then Kevin showed up and added the 'The Kellers.' Then Val wandered in, sighing, asked Betty not to lead her brother on, and tacked on 'The Browns.'

Reggie was a surprise. He strode in, nearly bowled Jughead over, and said, "Heard you had a murder board, Beetlejuice. Trying to deflect attention away from yourself? You're the obvious suspect." 

He added not just his father and brother but also six or seven cousins, then lounged around looking pleased at himself even though everyone wanted him to leave. The problem was, he demonstrated an uncanny knack for knowing exactly which back-issues of the _Blue and Gold_ would have information on the town's maple industry history. He declared it his 'Mantle maple sense.'

"Don't take your talents so seriously," Jughead told him. "No one else does." 

By the time Archie showed up, Veronica had broken up two fights, Val had retreated to a corner to ignore everyone from under cover of her headphones, Kevin and Jughead were possibly making plans in another corner to dispose of Reggie by any means necessary, and Betty was adding the final maple-related family to the murder board.

"The Andrews family?" Archie said, sounding blank.

"Archie," Betty said, whirling around in surprise.

"Why are _we_ up there?" Archie said.

"Because, Archie," said Cheryl, appearing very dramatically behind him. "All of the town's first families are after my family's maple syrup fortune."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clifford Blossom: maple maple maple maple maple  
> Penelope Blossom: we're inviting all the SUSPECTS. members of the town's FIRST FAMILIES.  
> Me: Betty, Veronica, Archie, Kevin, Jughead, and Val???


	2. Chapter 2

"Why can't anything in this town be normal?" Veronica said, not for the first time.

No one answered. It was entirely possible that no one in Riverdale knew what normal was. Cheryl definitely didn't. She sat next to Veronica, fluttering her eyelashes theatrically. Veronica left her alone. Of all people, Cheryl had the right to be theatrical.

As for Betty, she was wringing her hands but standing firm with Archie about the families on the murder board. As she did this, Jughead picked up a pen and a notecard and added his family's name.

"Why's yours up there?" Reggie demanded.

Jughead shrugged. "Completion's sake."

Reggie nodded, like this was fitting. Kevin said, "So what are we going to do about this? Everyone investigate their own parents, or...?"

"Veronica can't," Cheryl said suddenly. "Her only living connection to the twisted Lodge legacy is languishing behind the rusty bars of old Sing Sing, tortured by the whistle of the Metro-North train as it passes him by."

Veronica had no idea if Cheryl was trying to get her out of the unpleasant task of investigating her dad, or was just being rude to her. Probably both.

"My dad's not Johnny Cash, Cheryl," she said shortly. "And I can ask my mom for more info. Probably."

Betty nodded briskly, but Jughead shook his head.

"These families include us," he said, tapping one of the note cards (Kevin's, which made Kevin look affronted). "We can't trust that anyone talking to their parents will be impartial enough to do a proper investigation. And for my part, I know I didn't kill anybody, and I'm pretty sure Betty didn't, but--"

"Right, Betty wouldn't," Veronica agreed, just as Val said, "How do we know Betty didn't?" and Reggie said, "I dunno, I still suspect you, Edward Scissorhands."

"Why aren't I off the suspect list?" Archie demanded again.

Betty massaged her temples.

"Jughead's right," she said. "We're all on the suspect list. Any one of us could, theoretically, be the killer, because it turns out we _all_ have an ancient connection to the Blossoms."

"And some of us have a more recent connection," Cheryl put in. "As in Polly." When Veronica and Jughead glared, she added, unconvincingly, "Not that I think you did it, Betty."

"No, but you have a point," Betty allowed. "We need to be investigating each other. Checking each other. Assuming we're going to investigate."

"I'm in until I clear my family," Reggie said.

"Same," said Val.

Jughead looked like he would say something mutinous, but Betty spoke over him.

"Fine. That makes sense," she said. "So I think we should pair up, both to watch each other's backs and to make sure none of us is trying to sabotage the investigation. We draw lots to figure out which pair talks to which parent."

"So we end up potentially paired with a killer," Reggie said, gesturing wildly at Jughead. "Or talking to a killer. Okay. How about no."

" _I'm_ not a killer!" Archie said now.

"We don't need to do any of that," Cheryl said. "If someone killed Jason because of the maple fortune, and just the maple fortune, then they probably killed him to get the map to the fairground."

She spoke like they were overlooking the obvious, and for a second Veronica assumed that this was just because Cheryl was Cheryl and so what was a bizarre nonsequitor to the rest of the world was normal and obvious to her.

But then Jughead said, "The fairground," like he was taking this completely seriously.

And no one else looked the least bit surprised that Cheryl had brought it up.

"Sorry, refresher for the new girl," Veronica said, pointing at herself. "What fairground?"

"The old fairground that's the heart of the town," Archie said, like this was obvious.

"I thought Pop's was the heart of the town," Veronica said. "Metaphorically speaking."

"No, just the one 24-hour restaurant and so the social center," Kevin said. "The literal actual center is the huge old fairground that used to be the site of the original maple sugar house. Supposedly the original deed to the sugar house, and so the identity of the true maple heir, is buried somewhere in the fairground's haunted carnival."

"Which lies in the middle of a dense maple wood, also haunted," Jughead said. "I think we should stay out of there."

"Haunted carnival," Veronica said. "Haunted maple wood."

"My family owns the whole property," Cheryl said, like this explained the haunted thing. "Daddy gifted it to Jason on his ninth birthday."

"Your father gave your brother a haunted forest and fairground," Veronica repeated.

"Well, he wasn't going to give him the gas station on Pine Lane," Cheryl said. "Because he gave that to me."

"Oh, you own that gas station?" Reggie said. "Good place."

"I wouldn't know, Reggie," Cheryl said coolly. "I never go anywhere where you have to pump your own gas."

Sometimes Veronica felt like the entire town of Riverdale was a surreal youtube prank channel or something. Any minute someone was going to announce that she was being filmed for the benefit of bored eleven-year-olds across the internet. She glanced at Betty to reassure herself that this was real.

Betty nodded at her, calmly accepting.

"It's true," she said.

-

"Every kid in Riverdale's tried to sneak in once to ride the rides and see the woods beyond, but none of us ever made it far in," Betty explained. "The woods are really huge and spooky. But that is where, supposedly, the original maple fortune deed is buried."

"Along with a chest of gold doubloons?" Veronica said.

Betty detected sarcasm and whimsy in her tone, and was almost sorry that she would have to quell it.

"Actually, yes," she told Veronica.

Now Veronica turned around in the front seat and gaped at her.

"Those gold doubloons were stolen from the Spanish and then used to fund the original maple sugar house," Cheryl informed Veronica. 

"How you do," said Val.

Cheryl had insisted on driving all the girls out to the fairground, leaving the boys to take Kevin's car. Reggie had initially opted not to, wanting to take his own car, but had then doubled-back and said, "Nah, it speaks fluent German, not the language of the goddamned dead. I'll leave it here if we're going to the fairground."

And then Jughead had said, "Your car speaks a language fluently? What's it like to be outshined by your own vehicle, Reggie?"

So the last Betty had seen of the boys before Cheryl had pressed down on the gas and left them behind was Archie trying to prevent a fight and Kevin hissing, "This is my dad's car and if any of you messes it up I will mess you up, don't think I won't, because _he_ will mess _me_ up! Or at least look really disappointed!"

Really, the girls should have had a more comfortable drive out. Problem was, Cheryl didn't act like she wanted to drive out with the girls. She acted like she wanted to drive out with _Veronica_. She'd even called shotgun on Veronica's behalf, leaving Ronnie to shrug and take this as her due.

Betty wasn't sure how she felt about that. She wasn't going to tell Veronica who to be friends with, obviously. But they made such an elegant, sultry pair that a part of her felt a little like she should have expected this. What was it she'd told Kevin? That Veronica would find some other girl's life to ruin?

She had really believed that when she'd said it, so why did she now feel cheated that Veronica really had? 

Maybe it was because seeing them together made her feel so small-town by comparison. Though that made no sense, since Cheryl and Val were from the same small town, and Cheryl's ancestors had committed serial murder to, in essence, give most of the town to Cheryl. 

What they'd pieced together was this:

Betty's father's claims aside, originally seven families had controlled the maple fortune. Andrews, Mantles, Browns, Kellers, Lodges, Coopers, and Blossoms. The the latter six had murdered the Andrews partner. Then went most of the Mantles, in a burst of flame. Then someone pushed the Brown heir out of a window. Then a poor hapless Keller had been mysteriously decapitated. After that, a Lodge or two had been poisoned, almost routinely.

So, by the time you got to the death of Betty's great-grandfather, it was all very And Then There Were None. Except that there was one: a Blossom, apparently the only person in seven generations of seven families with enough good sense to leave a will behind that left his property to his kids instead of to his greedy, murderous business partners. Not that he'd had any business partners left, since, technically, they'd all killed each other.

Town lore had always hinted at something like this, usually when October rolled around and people started to joke about breaking into the old fairground. But Betty had never believed it. Another thing she'd said recently, after all, was that nothing bad was supposed to happen in Riverdale. How was she to have known that bad was built into the town's premier industry? And that the Cooper family had held onto that badness for so long, almost as long as the Blossoms?

No wonder Val looked at her so coolly. Betty hardly wanted to meet her own eyes in Cheryl's rearview. 

Partly, really, because she would be glad if Jason's death had to do with the old maple fortune. Then it wouldn't have to have anything to do Polly and Polly's mysterious engagement to Jason. 

Now the fairgrounds loomed before them, behind the massive, long, wrought-iron fence the Blossoms had erected to keep the town off their property. Here the sky was a pearly, cool white, and behind the fence there were enormous shapeless trees blocking the tattered old carnival tents that Betty knew lay just beyond. The Blossoms opened the fairground once a year, on Halloween night, supposedly because they got some kind of tax break out of that. The rest of the time it was locked, barred by fences and cliffs and dangerous ravines, and so was the rest of their massive forbidden park in the center of Riverdale.

"Okay," Veronica said, as Cheryl slowed the car. "How are we going to get in?"

"I'm going to climb the fence," Val said. "But you're wearing heels, Ronnie. So for you? I have no idea."

Cheryl pursed her lips in that way she did that always signaled she was going to say something dramatic.

"No one has to climb. Lucky for all of you, Jason gave me the key for safekeeping. I keep it in a locket attached to my bra." 

There was a pause. Betty asked the obvious question.

"A locket attached to your _bra_?" 

"I promised him I would keep it safely hidden on me always, and I'm not attaching it to my thong, Betty. Have some class," Cheryl said. 

She opened the door and let herself out of the car, so all the others did too. Betty tried to catch Veronica's eye about the bra thing, but for some reason Veronica was looking very determined to act almost like she hadn't heard it. She seemed to be muttering something under her breath, and that something sounded suspiciously like, "It's Riverdale. It's just Riverdale."

"So we have the key," Cheryl announced, when all the girls had piled out. "But it'll be useless to us, because the map died with Jason. He carried it on him always--"

"Let me guess: sewn into to his jock strap?" Val muttered.

"--but it vanished after his death. The coroner theorized that it had come apart in the water, but that's impossible. My family had it sealed and laminated."

Betty tried not to think of the logistics of Jason carrying a laminated map everywhere, and gave up. Sometimes she had to wonder if the biggest mystery here wasn't Jason's death or the maple fortune thing, but rather that Polly had actually fallen in love with this person, and agreed to become Cheryl's sister in law. Would the bra key have fallen to Polly? 

"Veronica," Cheryl said innocently. "Come help me get the key off, will you? I think it's stuck."

Betty's brain ground to a halt.

"I'll do it," she said loudly, not even realizing she was saying it. Cheryl was -- was _bending_ at Veronica, and undoing her top button, and Veronica was eying the line of her collar bone, and--

Betty located the locket, unhooked it from Cheryl's lacy designer number, and had to beat very hard against a very unkind and un-Betty impulse to snap the elastic against Cheryl's perfect white skin.

"Wow, Ellen Degenerate, jump at the opportunity much?" Cheryl said. 

"We should be focusing on how we're going to navigate the fairground," Betty replied firmly. 

"Yeah," Veronica said. "Do we really need a map?"

The other three stared at her. 

"The full extent of the fairgrounds is like five thousand acres, so yes," Val said.

"Five thousand unused acres in the middle of _Riverdale_?" Veronica said. "Riverdale's not even that big. That makes no sense--"

She broke off. Stared at the massive wrought-iron gates. "Okay. You know what? Fine. If I can take Central Park in Jimmy Choos, I can take this. Map or no map, let's get this over with."

"People supposedly go into that place and don't come back," Val said. "You hear about it every Halloween. Or, well, anytime anyone moves out of town, anyway."

"It's impossible to navigate," Betty added. "I get lost every year when the carnival opens. That's why having a map matters."

"We live in an era of google earth," Veronica protested, as the boys came up in Kevin's pickup. "We don't need some treasure map!"

"Correct," Jughead said, as he pulled himself out of the back of Kevin's pickup. "We don't."


	3. Chapter 3

"Every year," Jughead began, taking a stick and drawing a circle in the ground. The circle was more or less in the shape of the fairgrounds. "Every year the Blossoms hire the South Side Serpents to guard the carnival. To keep the riff raff from venturing too far out into the woods, where we could come across a reason to sue them. Or find the long-lost maple fortune."

"It's long-lost now?" Veronica said. "Really?"

Jughead flicked a glance her way out of irritation, but continued undeterred. 

"The Serpents have their own way of navigating the fairgrounds," he said. "They carve an 'S' into the trunk of each maple tree they pass. The tail of the S they turn into an arrow, and it always points back to the forbidden carousel--"

"Forbidden carousel," Veronica said. She was starting to sound testy.

"It's been out of order for like ninety years," Archie told her quickly, mostly to keep Jughead from looking annoyed again. 

Jughead, being Jughead, looked that way anyway.

"The forbidden carousel," he repeated, "that stands just inside the entrance. This means that if you follow the pattern of S's, you can always find your way out."

"How do you know all this, Hocus Pocus?" Reggie put in. 

"I'm observant, Reggie," Jughead said. "And I think we should do as Bets suggested and split up to cover what we can of the fairgrounds before it gets dark."

"To look for the long-lost fortune?" Veronica asked.

"To look for some sign that someone's been in there," Betty said. "Anyone who took the map from Jason probably used it to comb over the property looking for the fortune. If they left any clues behind, maybe we can figure out who they were."

It was a solid plan, but what unnerved Archie was that she and Jughead had had no time to come up with it together. It had just germinated separately in each of their minds, but then they'd come to it in concert. So now they were smiling at each other, like best friends who didn't need to talk to arrive at an understanding.

Which they were.

Which Archie _also_ should have been. To them. 

"We should search beyond the carnival, because nothing's likely to be hidden there and our murderer probably knew that," Jughead said. "So just -- just ignore the rides and stuff. And I suggest groups of four, so that if the murderer is among us, they're outnumbered by three. Bets and I will take one group and cover the eastern side of the fairgrounds."

"I'll go with you," Archie said quickly.

"Me too," said Val.

This left Kevin, Cheryl, Reggie, and Veronica to cover the west side. Kevin didn't look too pleased at this lineup, and, strangely, neither did Betty. But Archie wasn't sorry. At least Reggie and Jughead would be separated, and he was with exactly the group he would have chosen. One new friend, who he'd just discovered. And the two old ones, who he should probably try to discover anew. 

Although, Val was maybe a little more than a friend. Or meant to be. Once they were inside and creeping past the mirror maze and decrepit, unused snack booths, to a dense maple wood that they'd have to take more or less single file, Archie ended up walking with her, and Betty and Jughead ended up leading the way, heads close together.

Archie didn't know whether to be happy or frustrated. Was it possible to be both at the same time?

"Val," he said eventually, after some twenty minutes had passed in companionable silence. "You, like, like me. Right?"

"Aesthetically and personality-wise," Val confirmed. "You get one shot at asking and you just used it. Boom."

Archie looked at her, alarmed. She was grinning at him. Val had the same kind of sneakily radiant grin that Betty and Jughead both did, and not for the first time did Archie regret wasting so much time on the Grundy thing. _That_ was now an odd knot of hurt he couldn't talk about and didn't want to think about. And all he had to show for it was a strange reluctance to really dive into anything with the beautiful girl walking next to him, and also this weird chasm between him and his best friends.

"Can I ask why?" Archie said. "I just -- I just broke up with somebody else and I don't know that she really liked me. And the people who did, I've kind of messed things up with, so..."

He trailed off. Maybe he was pouring too much onto Val. He was so stupid; he never knew how to gauge stuff like this.

"Uh, you got hot," Val said, like this should be obvious. "And you've always been the nicest straight boy in our grade who isn't my brother. That's all I can give you right now, Archie. Maybe I'll like you more later, but for right now I can work with those pieces. Can you?"

"Yeah," Archie said quickly. "Yeah. For you? God, you're amazing. You're like--"

Val held up a hand carefully.

"We're bonding. We're talking music. We should probably make out at some point so I can tell what you're like as a kisser, and you can tell the same about me. But for now, I don't need big compliments. We both look good. We're not getting married."

"Right," Archie said quickly.

"Did this last girlfriend break your heart?" Val said. She made a careful balancing motion with her hands, like she was trying to get to the root of Archie's odd anxieties before she took another step into this. "You had a lot of breakup songs written."

Archie started to confirm this, but then stopped.

Yes, he felt horrible about the Grundy thing, but that wasn't what the songs were about. He'd written those songs while he'd still been together with Grundy. Those songs were about--

"Ah," Val said, recognition in her eyes. "Bett--"

"Jughead," Archie said, nodding.

Then: "Wait, Betty?"

"Jughead?" Val said. She gestured up at Jughead's skinny back. "That Jughead?"

"I never actually formally stopped being friends with Betty," Archie explained. "I mean, there was all that weird stuff two weeks ago when I had to tell her I only like her as a friend, but with Jug it's been -- _without_ Jug it's been--"

"Sorry, let me get this straight," Val said. "'Run away from you to her, leave you lonely in the summer,' and 'my morality's a betrayal, your cold words made that clear' -- those lyrics were about _Jughead_?"

Archie nodded. He hadn't realized it at the time he'd been writing them. But -- yeah. That's what it was about. That's what it was all about. This whole weird year, ever since they'd had their first fight. All the drifting apart. The odd sense of satisfaction he'd had when it turned out _he_ was closer to Betty than Jughead was. The cold sense of shame when it turned out that without them, Jug turned into the town loner.

And this horrible envy, too. Because while he'd been balancing Grundy and music and football, Betty and Jughead had come together again. Linked by a common mystery, like they didn't even need Archie.

By now they were deep in the woods, and had been mostly following in Betty and Jughead's wake as those two uncovered these Serpent-signals that Jughead seemed to have a knack for finding. At the base of one maple, they'd stopped and kneeled, investigating something on the ground that was maybe a footprint, maybe not. But when Archie and Val neared them, they weren't talking about footprints. 

"I know it's unfair of me, and wrong, and cruel, because she just lost her brother," Betty was saying. "Right?"

"I...you are obsessing about Veronica and totally -- totally not the redhead I expected," Jughead replied, shaking his head. 

"I'm not obsessing!" Betty said. "I'm just concerned. A week ago they were enemies. Now they're friends--"

"Or they're weird in-between kind-of-frenemies, like me and Archie," Jughead said, shrugging.

"Oh, just frenemies," Val said, looking relieved.

"We're not frenemies," Archie said. "We're friends. Right?"

Jughead looked up at him, caught out. After a second he looked back down at the dirt like this would erase what he had just said. 

"You said we were friends again," Archie said. "You said we weren't going to hug, and we would not-hug like friends!"

"If we were full-on friends, we would have hugged," Jughead pointed out.

"But we didn't because of you!" said Archie. "You said not to! I wanted to!"

He knew he was focusing on the wrong thing, like how he'd zeroed in on the Andrews name on the murder board, instead of just asking why his two best friends were so comfortable making his whole family suspects without talking to him first. But he couldn't help it. Archie wasn't good at sleuthing things out and sarcastically talking around things. He usually just dealt with the thing right in front of him. 

Val and Betty both seemed to get this. 

"Maybe," Betty began. 

"Maybe you and I should look for clues and make note of the S's," Val finished. "And these two should talk."

They pulled ahead. Jughead, still kneeling in the dirt, stared after them as though betrayed. Which wasn't fair, because if anyone should feel betrayed it was Archie. Jughead had said the fighting was over, but now he'd gone and called him a _frenemy_. 

"Are we really frenemies?" Archie asked. 

Jughead stood up, dusting off his dirty jeans twice before giving up. He started after the girls, but beckoned at Archie to follow him. 

"Okay, I said weird in-between kind-of-frenemies," he said, carefully enunciating every piece of this. "Not frenemies-frenemies. And I only used the term to capture the essence of Veronica and Cheryl, who you must admit are two queen bees in the same hive. You and I are obviously not like that. We're just," and here he paused very briefly, like he knew he had to say the right thing. "Interstitial."

"What does that mean?" Archie demanded. 

Jughead rolled his eyes. 

"It means this is re-growing, Archie. Me. You. You stopped inviting me over or texting me--"

"You were mad at me!" Archie said. "You stopped being my friend first!"

Now Jughead looked as upset as Jughead got, a look that would be merely sarcastically irritated on anyone else but that Archie associated with almost a year of carefully ignoring each other while pretending they weren't. 

"I am your friend, pal," Jughead snapped. "I've always been your friend. The one who started acting like an enemy was you."

"Now we're back to frenemies," Archie said. "I knew it. I knew this was about your dad. I _had_ to tell my dad he was stealing stuff--"

"This isn't about that!" Jughead said, exasperated. "God, Archie, do you think this is some stupid family feud, like the maple syrup fortune?"

"Yes!" Archie insisted. He wasn't sure what else it could be. He only knew that the careful ignoring and the shuttered glances and the missed road trips and the sarcastic not-fights had begun somewhere, and it seemed like that was the place. That moment, when he'd gone to Fred about FP Jones, knowing the whole time what it would do to Jughead. 

He'd done the right thing. And then he'd spent months ignoring Jughead and instead zeroing in on anything -- new friends, parties, construction, music, football, Grundy -- that would keep him from feeling like shit about it. 

"This isn't about that," Jughead said again, shaking his head. 

"So what's it about?" Archie demanded. 

Jughead stopped walking and looked at him full-on. For a second, he seemed brittle and furious. 

"I don't know," he said finally. "But the thing with my dad isn't it. You did that and afterwards you didn't _ask_. You didn't ask what it was like to deal with him after, for me or my mom or Jellybean. You didn't ask how any of us were going to get by, or what was going on with us--"

He broke off. Archie had never seen him at a loss for words before, and so the pause felt especially terrible. 

"I used to know a guy who was like nobody else in this town, because he always did the right thing," Jughead said. "And then he started acting like there was no point in doing the right thing, or anything, by me."

If the Grundy thing was by now a knot in Archie's chest, then this was something even more unexpected. It was an outright hole, and at once both more familiar and more surreally surprising. It was like Jughead had just disembowelled him with a Pop's ice cream scoop. 

"Jug," Archie said, a little helplessly because he wasn't sure what to say beyond that. 

He was saved from saying anything. There was a clap of thunder. A rush of unseasonably warm wind. Far off, two eerie screams that sounded like Cheryl and Veronica. 

A few seconds later, Val and Betty came running back to them. 

"Did you guys hear that?" Betty said. 

"Are you guys seeing this?" Val said. 

Archie looked where she was pointing. It was the very end of September, and so the trees around them should have been losing their green around the edges. Instead, they were gaining it, looking like they were starting to bud. 

It began to rain. It wasn't an autumn shower, though. It was the soft bright mist of a Riverdale spring.


	4. Chapter 4

Kevin, as the sheriff's son, a decent sleuth in his own right, and a boy possessed of a well-hidden but powerful competitive streak, was kind of annoyed that he was on the team destined to lose. 

Not that it was a competition. And they were the best-dressed team, since Veronica was looking beautiful in her best pearls, Cheryl's outfit (houndstooth and snakeskin!) was amazing as always, and Reggie's pants were the limited edition dressy street fashion kind that cost like nine hundred dollars and got worn to fancy restaurants by music moguls. 

But there was no one around to admire these details but Kevin, since they were in the middle of a dense maple forest. And Kevin had to be the one to track the S-symbols carved into the trees, since no one else here was going to do it. Reggie was quickly establishing himself as the team member most likely to be murdered by the other three and left to rot in the forest, since he kept finding small branches to flick back at the others' faces -- not painful, but definitely annoying. 

And Cheryl and Veronica were very, very into Cheryl and Veronica.

"It means a lot to know you don't hold the twisted, vicious history of my family name against me, Veronica," Cheryl said.

"Oh, like no way, girl," Veronica said. "I don't have a leg to stand on. Plus now it turns out it was all our families, so."

"Yes," Cheryl said. "Even Betty's."

She looked impossibly pleased at that. Veronica either didn't notice or was too polite to point it out, because she caught Kevin's odd expression and just smiled with a lot of teeth, like they needed to try and be nice to Cheryl now.

"Yeah," she said, after a second. "How did Betty turn out so normal after growing up in a town like Riverdale?" 

"Well," Cheryl said. "Some people are just aggressively mundane. Let's not talk about Betty. I think you and I should go shopping on Tuesday. Since your family is rotting in deepest poverty right now, I can pay."

"Didn't your mother cut your allowance?" Veronica said. "You know, after the memorial?"

"Yes," Cheryl said. "But Nana Rose hands out her credit cards the second you ply her with schnapps."

"Oh," Veronica said. She was clearly considering the morality of this scheme, and Kevin had high hopes that she would turn it down, but then she said, "Alright then. It's a date."

Kevin was Betty's friend, so he was pretty sure this was disloyal in some way, though he couldn't pinpoint how since Betty, being Betty, would take a cool century before she acted on her feelings for her latest crush. And he was the sheriff's son, so he was pretty the Cheryl and Veronica date would also be credit card fraud. But his heart quailed at confronting Cheryl and Veronica about it. 

Also his heart quailed because every stupid S he found reminded him of his -- his gangster that he had been kissing last week. Who he hadn't been able to kiss in a week. This was the first time he'd managed to leave the house without his father watching him, and he found himself in a forest with Reggie Mantle and two girls who were walking very, very close together; and getting very, very touchy.

Kevin squinted at them.

"Are they looking touchy to you?" he asked Reggie.

"They have to touch each other," Reggie said. "They're gonna fall over in those heels if they don't help each other along. You should stop walking so fast. It's not gentlemanly."

Kevin goggled at the thought that Reggie Mantle assumed he knew what a gentleman did. As if to punctuate this, Reggie went up ahead a few paces and flicked a branch at him.

"That's not gentlemanly!" Kevin said.

Reggie shrugged.

"I'd totally help the girls along, though, it's just that Cheryl's hated me since I told Jason he needed to quit chasing girls and start improving his plays, so she'd probably dig her nails into my throat again; and Veronica, like, boiled a dude alive."

"Shouldn't they have boiled you?" Kevin pointed out. "I saw the playbook. You were in it."

Reggie looked affronted. "Only because I'm a bulldog. A bulldog's gotta take part in team activities, but I wasn't putting girls up on instagram or whatever. I'd just be like, 'oh yeah, I totally did it with Ethel and Samantha and Judy and Pauline. Put me down for fifty points. Now let's practice.'"

"Oh my god," Kevin said. "Not only are we the losing team, we're the blackhearted and immoral team."

"Excuse me?" Veronica said behind them.

"Nothing," Kevin said quickly. "Let's look for clues? Anybody see any clues yet? Or can we give up and leave?"

"I was ready to leave ten minutes ago," Reggie said. "I only showed up to this creeptown murder show because I wanted to tell Jughead that my family was a first family."

"What?" Kevin said.

"Yeah," Reggie said, grinning. "I thought we'd only gotten here like twenty years ago. I had no idea we had history in the area. But then Eddie and Marilyn Munster were acting like this makes the Mantles--" he pointed at himself --" _murderers_ \---" he pointed at the trees as though they were killer trees, "--and that just doesn't fly."

Then he added, "But I'm damn sure a Mantle didn't do it because the one sport we don't do is hiking, and this is a lot of hiking. So I'm ready to go."

"I'll never leave as long as J.J.'s killer isn't found," Cheryl said dramatically behind them.

Then she tripped and went down, almost dragging Veronica down with her. 

"Seriously, guys," Veronica said, as she, Reggie, and Kevin helped Cheryl up. "Google earth. Let's see if we can use google earth. They take satellite pictures. As in, from a _satellite_. And they update pretty often, so the images probably date to after Jason's murder."

She had a point. And Kevin had a date to schedule. He turned around, tapped the arrow-tail of the nearest S, pointing to the exit, and started to write out a text to Joaquin. He could hear the others fall into line behind him. Up ahead, they soon saw tattered carnival bunting and the creaky, eerie top of the ferris wheel. Kevin tried not to glance at his phone every few seconds to see if Joaquin had responded, but it was hard.

He hadn't responded when they passed the Loop O'Plane, and he still hadn't responded when they passed the empty freakshow tent. Was he not into Kevin? Or just currently wrapped up in a crack deal?

Crack deal would probably be worse, what with the ethics of it, but who was Kevin kidding. He was team blackhearted now, like most Riverdale residents. He wanted the boy to be dealing crack, because that would explain why he hadn't texted back right away.

"Uh, guys," Reggie said. "Don't look now, but you're all losers."

"Who are you calling a loser, Coach Clayton's second choice?" Cheryl snapped.

"All of you," Reggie said. "All of you. I found the first clue!"

What he'd found was the bumper car arena, enclosed under a weird roof painted with clowns impaled by thorns. Kevin eyed it warily, but stepped inside and found Reggie's clue.

Bedding. Some plastic cartons of water. Snacks. 

Someone was living here.

"Okay," Veronica said. "You found a homeless person. Do you guys not know what homeless people are? Do you not have those here?"

"A homeless person on the haunted fairground?" Reggie said. "Nah. No one in Riverdale would dare live here like this. I knew Jughead was full of shit when he said not to look too closely at the carnival. It's got to be the murderer."

"It's got to be a charge of vagrancy," Kevin said, antsy at the rose-covered murder victim clowns. "I say we report it to my dad and leave."

"You're going to kick this poor person out?" Veronica said. "Come on. They're not hurting anybody."

"Unless they _did_ ," Reggie said. "And why should we let Sheriff Keller have the glory of catching them?"

"I think we should leave," Cheryl said suddenly. "If it is Jason's killer, I don't-- I don't actually want to meet them."

It was the most straightforward and un-Cheryl-like thing she'd said all day. Veronica put a hand on her shoulder.

"Alright, Cheryl," she said, and when Reggie looked like he would argue she shot him a glare so intimidating that even he shut up. 

But the problem was, once they reached the fairground entrance they realized that they couldn't leave. Or at least Kevin couldn't. Only two of them had brought cars, Cheryl and Kevin himself, and if Cheryl left with the other two then Kevin would still have to stay to make sure Betty, Archie, Val, and Jughead got home.

"Okay, you are not leaving me waiting here alone on the midway of terrors," he told the other three. "No way."

"Relax," Veronica said, rolling her eyes. She climbed up onto the carousel and pulled out her phone. "I'll just text Betty, and we'll tell the others Cheryl is calling it off."

She sat down on a wooden carousel bench intricately carved with thorny roses. Her pretty designer handbag got tossed down next to her feet in their matching pumps, and Kevin was trying to admire it when he realized that something was carved into the base of the bench.

A name. Blossom.

"Is even the _carousel_ Blossom-themed?" he asked Cheryl.

Cheryl blinked at him.

"It's Riverdale-themed," she said. "All the first families are on there. I thought everyone knew that."

"All of us?" Reggie said interestedly. "No way. We'd better have a peacock. That's what's on the Mantle coat of arms."

"You have a coat of arms?" Veronica said, raising an eyebrow like she thought this was ridiculous.

"We all do," Cheryl said. "The Blossom insignia is the thorn of a red rose."

"You mean a red rose with thorns," said Veronica. 

"No," Cheryl said, because evidently the Blossoms knew their brand.

By now they'd all climbed onto the carousel. For some reason, it seemed safer on it then off in the open, where any passing vagrant-slash-murderer could see them easily. Kevin found the Keller rottweilers right away. Reggie crowed when he discovered a flock of huge wooden peacocks the size of horses. Veronica said, "Okay, I'm sorry, I have got to see what we have," and then hunted among the various animals until she found a pack of coyotes that all bore her family name.

"Okay," she said, shrugging. "Acceptable. At least we're not those grumpy-looking bears over there. Looks like that's Archie's family. Who're the giant spiders? That's almost worse than the thorn thing."

Cheryl opened her mouth to answer, since she seemed to know who every animal corresponded to, when suddenly the carousel lurched. 

Kevin gave a yell. So did Reggie and Cheryl. Veronica didn't, but her face went deathly white and she clung to the nearest coyote so hard that her fingernails went white too.

Slowly, eerily, the carousel lights came on one by one. The carousel began to move backwards. Loud, tinny music began to play.

"I thought you said this was out of order!" Veronica shouted at Kevin.

"I never said that!" Kevin shouted back, though it didn't matter who'd said it, since they were all in the same creepy situation. Reggie seemed to be trying to edge to Cheryl's bench, which was close enough to the edge that maybe they could all jump off. 

But the carousel was moving too fast by now, and the music was getting louder. Kevin started to feel dizzy. Why did it have to go _backwards_? 

"Everyone get on an animal!" Veronica shouted. "If you're holding onto something, you should be okay!"

Reggie grabbed a spider. Cheryl scrambled onto a huge mountain lion. Kevin only just barely managed to get on a rottweiler. The carousel went faster and faster, the music blaring even as thunder sounded ominously in the distance. The carousel song was, appropriately, the Maple March, the official song of Riverdale. After about two minutes of it, Kevin decided he never wanted to hear the official song of Riverdale ever again. 

When it stopped, Kevin felt like he was going to throw up. He staggered to the edge and climbed down off the carousel. The carnival bunting all around them looked too bright, the sky a little too blue despite the misty rain. The Maple March had died down, so now the only thing he heard was footsteps, a little off to the side. He squinted up at the source.

"Veronica?" he said, looking at the girl in front of him.

She screamed. Someone stepped out from behind her, and when Kevin got a good look at his red hair and deathly pale skin, he felt like screaming too, but he vomited instead.

So Cheryl was the one that started screaming.

"Jason?" she shrieked. " _Jason_!"


	5. Chapter 5

Veronica had never met Jason, but she knew it wasn't Jason even before not-Jason waved four huge bikers into the fairground. Because the first thing Jason said was, "Why are you on my property? I knew it. I knew there were people snooping around looking for the maple deed. Who are you with? Lodge? Someone else?"

That supercilious tone, something about the old-fashioned cut of his turtleneck, and the weird, obsessive way he said _maple_ \-- all of it screamed Clifford Blossom. Also, Veronica recognized the girl standing next to him, because she'd seen that 80s girl next door in way too many family photo albums, always just before she morphed into a 90s socialite beauty queen. 

"That's my mom," she hissed at Reggie, grabbing him by the wrist and pulling him back behind the carved coyotes before they could be spotted like Kevin and Cheryl. 

"Your mom's hot," Reggie said. "Wait -- your mom?"

"The carousel was going backwards," Veronica whispered. "Backwards in time. It's not out of order. It's magic!"

Reggie gave her an irritating smirk. "You believe in magic?"

"You believe in an apocryphal maple deed, a long-lost treasure of Spanish doubloons, and a haunted fairground," Veronica said. 

Reggie stopped smirking.

"What's your mom doing with that guy?" he said now. "Holy shit, is that Jason's dad?"

"You can tell?"

"Yeah," Reggie said. "I'd know that snobby asshole anywhere."

This was a very pot and kettle moment, but Veronica let it alone because she, too, wanted to know what the hell her mother was doing with Clifford Blossom. Her mother had said they hated Clifford Blossom. Or, well. Her mother had said her _father_ didn't like Clifford, and that she herself didn't like Penelope. 

That suddenly seemed like very ominous phrasing to Veronica.

It got more ominous when her mother pulled Clifford back, put a hand tenderly on his face, and started talking to him in a low voice.

"Dammit, I told mother I would guard this property and I will!" Clifford said after a moment, pushing her off. He made a hand motion and the bikers closed in on a terrified Kevin and Cheryl.

"We should get out of here," Reggie decided.

"And leave Kevin and Cheryl?" said Veronica.

But then Clifford said, "Lock them in the old sugar house!" so Reggie said. "Do you want to end up in a sugar house? I don't even know what a sugar house is."

Neither did Veronica, but that didn't mean she wanted to be the kind of person who left Kevin and Cheryl to suffer that fate. She was wracked by unease.

"There are like four bikers out there," Reggie said in a low voice, as he dragged her to the other side of the carousel. "I'm a powerful specimen, but even I can't take on four bikers. Come on. We'll take cover behind the haunted house and follow them to the sugar house. Maybe we can rescue Kevin and Cheryl from there."

Veronica had to admit the logic of this. They crept off the back of the carousel together and then ran behind the haunted house. They could hear the sounds of Kevin struggling and Cheryl screeching, plus the low voice of Veronica's mother.

What was her mom doing wrapped up in this? Veronica tried to crane her neck around the corner of the haunted house to watch, but Reggie pulled her back before two of the bikers -- not the Serpents but the Greendale Crocodiles, apparently -- could see her. A light, misty rain spread around them, the kind that didn't merit an umbrella but was still guaranteed to ruin your hair. Veronica wished desperately for her cloak. Like all weather in this moody little town, this was cloak weather.

Soon enough the struggle and shouting died away, as Clifford, Hermione, and the others made off into the forest. Reggie and Veronica crept out from behind the haunted house to follow them and found themselves looking at the ferris wheel.

"The carousel was right here," Veronica said, confused.

"No," Reggie said, shaking his head. "Couldn't have been. Come on."

They went back around the haunted house and ended up at the log flume. Then they turned and lost the haunted house, and found the mirror maze. The ferris wheel was now behind them, which felt wrong. Veronica, who was no stranger to playing Betty's words over in her mind, still felt an eerie chill now as she remembered Betty saying,

_I get lost every year when the carnival opens._

"Look for the S's," Reggie said.

"There are no S's," Veronica said worriedly. "The Serpents set those up, and I don't think there are any Serpents in this time. Those guys were the Greendale Crocodiles."

They walked around looking for S's anyway, just to be sure, but they didn't find any. So then they stopped and stared at each other despairingly. By now they were near the edge of the maple woods again, though Veronica had no idea if they were by the right edge, the one Kevin and Cheryl had been taken to.

She made an executive decision anyway.

"Come on," she said. "We have to find them, so we have no choice but to look for them."

She and Reggie set out. This time Reggie was a lot less annoying and a lot more businesslike, flicking absolutely no branches her way and politely helping her over huge tree roots. Veronica appreciated his focus, for all that she still assumed he was the poor man's Archie, who was really, honestly, kind of the poor man's Betty Cooper.

Veronica tried not to engage in ranking people most of the time, not since her Spence days. But sadly it was all too easy to know how she ranked people in Riverdale. Betty was at the top. Cheryl, weirdly enough, was creeping up there. But Betty would always be at the top. 

So she kind of thought she was hallucinating Betty's voice when she heard it. But then she heard it a second time, sounding panicky over the way all the S's had vanished.

"Betty?" she shouted.

"Veronica!" Betty said back. 

Veronica ran in the direction of the voice, leaving Reggie to curse and pound after her. After a few seconds, they came upon Betty, Archie, Jughead, and Val.

"You're okay!" Betty said, looking relieved. 

"Betty," Veronica said. "We're in the 80s!"

Then she and Reggie had to explain. Betty and Val looked like they believed them, but Archie and Jughead only looked snappish and upset. Which, for Jughead, wasn't so strange, but for Archie it was.

"I'm serious," Veronica told him. "I wouldn't make this up!"

"I believe you, Ronnie," Archie said. "I just have bigger things to think about right now."

"What, did you and Elvira here have a fight?" Reggie said, gesturing between him and Jughead. 

Archie looked away. Jughead looked away.

"Oh my god," Reggie crowed. "You did! Well, shelve it, Andrews. We don't have time for it. We've got to get Keller and Cheryl."

"You're not the leader, Reggie," Jughead said coolly.

"Yeah, then who is?" said Reggie.

Jughead looked around at all of them.

"Betty," he decided, because for all his moroseness he was a sensible person.

"Me?" Betty said.

But no one moved to oppose this (Reggie possibly didn't because he was stunned), so Betty it was. 

"I--okay," Betty said. "Fine. Well, you and Reggie were coming from that way, and we set out into the woods from the West, and so if it's still a little after midday--" 

She looked up at the sun. She looked at Jughead.

"I think we need to go that way," she said, pointing in a direction that to Veronica looked exactly like all the other directions. Jughead nodded like this made sense.

"Come on," Betty said, grabbing Veronica's hand, "Follow me."

Everyone did follow her. Reggie fell in line behind them with Archie like they were old friends, even though Archie seemed to want to walk with Jughead. And Jughead and Val brought up the rear, Val looking like she was debating whether or not to tell him something.

For her part, Veronica said, "How do you know where to go?"

"Juggie was talking me through this place earlier," Betty said. "He said he and his dad used to hike here. I think he might have set up some of those S-signs, honestly. They look like his kind of carving, even if he's claiming they come from the Serpents." 

Then she caught herself and stopped, looking contrite.

"I didn't tell you that," she said quickly. "Sorry. Please don't tell anyone. He usually doesn't lie about stuff--"

"Not gonna tell," Veronica said, crossing her heart. "Scout's honor. Or, well. Barney's preferred shopper's honor. I was never a scout, as you can probably tell, but I could navigate Barney's like a pro."

Betty grinned. "Thanks," she said. "It's just easy to tell you things for some reason. And I was happy to see you were fine. We heard you and Cheryl screaming, and--"

"Just Cheryl," Veronica said. "And my mom. Who was -- is -- dating Clifford Blossom."

It shouldn't have felt like a weird betrayal, and yet it totally felt like a weird betrayal. Veronica's mother was her best friend. Clifford Blossom was a man who gloated about seeing Veronica's dad in prison. It was one great taste and one absolutely abhorrent one, like a sandwich of avocado and rat poison. 

"Oh," Betty said now, looking away strangely. "Well. It must be nice to know your family and Cheryl's go back like that."

Veronica stared at her.

"Cheryl's family is terrible," she said. "I mean, so are all our families, apparently, but Cheryl's family was so good at being terrible that they out-terribled all the other terribles."

"Did they?" Betty said, glancing up at the sky again and then veering off to the right. Veronica followed her, as did everybody else.

Betty kept talking as they climbed over roots and around massive trees. "Maybe Cheryl's family won at being terrible. But that doesn't excuse the rest of us. My family hates hers so much that I -- that I think we punished _Polly_ over it. I mean, for all I know, we could be just as bad as the Blossoms."

"I doubt it?" said Veronica, who had actually spent a night with the Blossoms and whose brain now screamed _never again_ and _oh god someone rescue Cheryl_ every time the memory of it resurfaced. 

"What I mean is, I don't think I'm any better than Cheryl," Betty said. "And, you know, if you guys are friends, or into each other, that's great! I am great with that. That is so great."

She smiled here. The smile was lustrous, her skin was lustrous, her eyes were as beautiful as ever, and yet Veronica smelled something fake.

"Oh no, girl," she said. "Do not give me that 'Archie, how about you take me _and_ Veronica to the dance' smile."

The smile vanished.

"This is my smile," Betty insisted.

"You're not doing it any more," said Veronica, "and no, it isn't. Betty, I know you."

"You've known me a month!" Betty said.

"I knew you before I met you," Veronica said, rolling her eyes, because it was the truth. "There was a weird Betty-shaped hole, and I didn't know what should go there because it was a _hole_ , but then I met you and it was total Carol and Therese, okay? You. Not Cheryl."

Betty stared at her. Only belatedly did Veronica realize she'd even said something big.

"I once had Henry Rockefeller tell me I should just follow my heart and go to the St. Paul's prom with Walter Schumer," she said, by way of explanation, "So, like, I know the face of a panicking person who thinks you don't like them and is trying to do the right thing by you."

"...Rockefeller?" Betty said, after a second.

"Oh, he was totally right," Veronica said. "I _didn't_ like him. He was boring. But I do like you. So."

She subsided into silence. She was trying to be a better Veronica, and honesty was a big part of that. But it occurred to her that she'd just dropped a lot on Betty, and Betty wasn't great about facing romantic stuff in general. 

"Veronica?" Betty said, very quietly. 

Veronica looked at her. She was smiling her real smile, the one that was a little lopsided and sneaky.

"I like you too," Betty said, sounding thrilled.

Veronica felt an answering smile break across her face.


	6. Chapter 6

Of course, Betty's life being what it was, two seconds after they established that Veronica wasn't ditching her for Cheryl, and that in fact Veronica liked her in the way Spence girls were supposed to like Rockefellers, they walked into someone who shone a flashlight right into Betty's face.

"Who are you?" this person demanded shrilly. 

"Who uses a flashlight in the middle of the afternoon?" was all Betty could manage to say. 

"Do you have to ask?" came Jughead's voice as the others caught up with her and Veronica. "Because she looks like you and she's carrying a copy of the Blue and Gold."

"I edit the Blue and Gold," Betty's flashlight attacker snapped. Then she turned off her flashlight. Then Betty still had to blink four times before she could get a good look at the delicate features, faint-and-rarely-used dimples, and wide blue eyes.

Ultra-familiar. Unpleasantly so.

"Nooooo," Betty said, but she said it behind her teeth because something instinctive in her smiled the fake smile any time she saw her mother's unique combination of fragility and viciousness.

"That's right," said Alice. "It's sugaring season. The time of year when vandals and trespassers descend on Riverdale's forbidden fairgrounds to look for the lost maple syrup fortune. And here you are: vandals and trespassers! Including--"

Here she turned her flashlight on again and tried to aim it at Veronica. Veronica stepped back several times and tried to bat the beams of light away like she was an offended Siamese cat. 

"Hm. You're not Hermione," Alice said, after a few seconds of this. The flashlight attacked each of the others in turn. "But, ha! You're -- wait. No. You're not FP. And you're too ginger to be Fred. And you're -- you kind of look like a Brown, but I've never met you before. And who the hell are you?"

"Reggie," Reggie said. He sounded like he was embarrassed for her and she really should have known who he was.

Alice looked disappointed. Betty got the creeping sense that she hadn't really been searching for trespassers and vandals, only schoolmates she didn't like. 

"What do you use the Blue and Gold for?" Betty asked her suspiciously.

"To publish the truth," Alice said with a sniff. "Particularly when it's about the worst miscreants the town has to offer. Speaking of, you didn't see a girl next door type or her two little tagalong Andrews and Jones boys, did you? They're supposed to be creeping around here."

Strangely, Val looked right at Betty. Betty shook her head slightly. She didn't want anyone helping Alice make targets of her classmates. 

"Nope," Val said. "We definitely saw nobody."

"Dammit," Alice said. "Penelope! I think it's just some weirdoes from Greendale." A thin mousy-haired girl crept out from behind a tree and Alice added, a little dismissively, "My co-editor, Penelope Doiley."

Veronica gasped. "Mama Blossom is a Doiley and not a natural redhead?" she whispered. "God, I miss Kev already. Kev would appreciate this."

This reminded Betty that they were still looking for Kev. And Cheryl. Betty carefully set aside the panicky sense of strangeness her mother inspired, because Cheryl and Kev were more important.

"Sorry, we can't be more helpful," she told her mother. "You wouldn't happen to know the way to the old sugar house, would you?"

Alice eyeballed her like she thought Betty was stupid.

"The one they're tearing down today?" she said.

"What?" said Veronica. 

"What?" said Betty.

"Andrews construction is taking a wrecking ball to it. Today," Alice said. "That's why all the treasure hunters are out in full force. They're going to play vultures and circle the corpse of the place. And that's why Fred Andrews was bragging about tossing his hat in the ring."

"Sorry," Veronica said, "but they _can't_ tear it down. Two of our friends are locked in there."

"Or one of our friends and also our Cheryl," said Jughead.

"Yeah, and that doesn't sound like Fred Andrews," Archie put in. 

"You'd better go get your friends out in like the next hour, then," Alice told them. Then she shined her light in Archie's face and smiled when he flinched. "And yes. It does. Fred's a dimwit jock. Come on, Penelope!"

With this, two bratty teens who would make great bratty teens in their forties (some hearts were just forever young, Betty guessed) vanished back through the trees. 

"Well, that confirms that Reggie and Veronica weren't lying," Jughead said. "For anyone who was skeptical."

"Obviously we weren't lying, Lurch," Reggie snapped. "We rode the carousel, saw Ronnie's hot mom and Jason's evil dad, lost the others -- hell, we even found where the murderer's been sleeping. The bumper car ride."

Jughead walked into a tree. Reggie laughed. Archie started in to help Jug, seemed to abort this plan mid-step, and then turned and whispered, "Hey, Veronica, can we talk for a sec?"

Veronica nodded. 

Val said, "Guys, weird thought. Flocks of birds keep coming in from over there. So do squirrels and stuff. Like they're escaping something."

"Bulldozers?" Betty theorized. "Heading for the sugar house?"

Val nodded. 

It was as good a theory as any. Betty led the group in the direction Val had suggested, making note of where they were headed relative to the fairground. This time Jughead fell into step just behind her. Veronica, though, fell behind even Val and Reggie, walking now with Archie. Betty heard him saying something about trains and the rest of his life, and Veronica said, not at all embarrassed, "Oh, that's already handled, Andrews. I told Betty I like her like two seconds ago."

It was a chilly spring day here in the trope-filled horror show that was 1980s Riverdale, and yet Betty felt warmth spread through her.

"Guess you won the Betty versus Cheryl standoff," Jughead said now. 

"It wasn't a standoff," Betty said quickly. "I would have let Veronica choose what she wanted, you know."

"Of course you would have. You're Betty," Jughead said. "That's exactly why she would have been stupid not to choose you."

Juggie's ability to take the wild weirdness of Riverdale and arrange it into narrative coherence would always be one of the many things Betty liked about him. So now that the path widened up in front of them, she fell back a little to walk with him. He was looking, she thought, even more sleep-deprived and casually spooked than normal. It could be because the maple wood had been rewound back a few decades. But then -- Jughead was the kind of person to appreciate something like that, deep down in his odd soul. 

"Everything okay with Archie?" she said lightly.

Betty had eyes. She'd definitely noticed how distanced they'd become the last few months of freshman year, and had heard from Kev how they'd circled each other warily over the summer, proposing road trips that never happened and movie nights that they were each obviously planning to back out on. 

"Nothing has been okay with Archie for months. He was sleeping with his teacher," Jughead said now.

"Not what I meant," Betty said carefully. "So I'll put it this way. Everything okay with you?"

Jughead scowled.

"Everything is fine. Or maybe not fine, but at least everything is status quo."

"Okay," Betty said, relieved. But then she thought about that, and her relief evaporated.

"Juggie, status quo in Riverdale for the past few months -- maybe status quo in Riverdale forever -- has been awful."

Jughead eyed her warily. 

"Noticed that, have you?"

"You're not the only person who can tell weird from not-weird, Jughead."

"No, I'm just less loud about it than your beloved Veronica," Jughead said. 

Betty recognized this for what it was: an invitation to start talking about Veronica's wicked little grins, her cleverest rejoinders, her ability to inject fun into any moment no matter how bizarre. Her eyes. She beat back the impulse to do so. They weren't actually talking about Veronica, but about Jughead. This was maybe the only situation in which Jughead -- who otherwise mixed with Veronica like working-class oil and sparkling ninety-five-dollar water -- would try to invite discussion about Veronica. To throw attention off of him.

"Is this just about Archie, or is this about what's going on with you?" Betty said. She was sorry to say that if she'd had a flashlight, she would have shined it in his eyes to punctuate that this was no longer just a friendly conversation. She wanted a real answer from him. 

"Archie is, as ever, always wrapped up in what's going on with me," Jughead admitted. "He just doesn't know it."

A few weeks ago, Betty could have said the same thing. They'd all grown up together, three odd duck Riverdale kids -- the tomboy, the weirdo, and the boy next door -- with their roots tangled together. They'd felt like they would _always_ have to be together. Like fairgrounds and carousel rides, or football and cheerleaders, or ancient fortunes and murder. 

But not all fated combinations ended up being nice ones. 

"Jug," she said, "I have enough evasion and secrets with the Jason and Polly star-crossed lovers maple murder stuff. Can you please just come out with it?"

Another thing she loved about Jughead was how he just -- just knew when she needed him to be honest. 

"The person they found living on the fairgrounds is me," he said shortly.

"What?" Betty said.

"It's me," Jughead said. "Not the murderer. I haven't wanted to go home for the past few months, so I've been living off the town. First at the drive-in. Now here."

"You decided to be homeless? Why?" Betty asked, aghast. Then she repeated it in a lower register, worried that she'd said it too loud and that the others would hear, and yet desperate for an explanation.

"Jason Blossom was ready to make himself homeless for something," Jughead said. "And honestly, the way your parents have handled Polly, she probably did too. You can't say there's not precedent for it."

"I don't care about precedent," Betty said. "Jug, I want to know that you're okay!"

"I am," he said. "I'm--"

"Do _not_ say status quo!"

Weirdly, he smiled at her.

"No, not that," he said. "Just having you ask means things aren't status quo. Thanks."

"Why are you thanking me?" Betty said. "Don't thank me, Jughead. Just answer my question. What's so bad that you have to live by yourself on the fairground?"

Jughead didn't answer. He was back to evasion. 

"Sometimes I envy the dead," he said. "Jason went missing, and within twenty-four hours everybody knew. Everybody was cataloguing the last time they saw him, the way he looked at his sister, the odd vagaries in his character over the past few months. Everybody was coming up with little rituals, like touching his name plate in the locker room. Every trophy and picture of him suddenly took on a gleam. Can you say any of us would get that same treatment?"

"If you're trying to imply that no one would notice if you died, well -- _I_ would," Betty snapped. "Archie would!"

Jughead looked like he was going to argue this point, but now they came upon a well-trodden dirt road, one Betty was sure no longer existed in their time. There was a showy Cadillac parked there, the kind that signaled a John Hughes villain. A handsome black-haired young man in a varsity jacket leaned against it, talking loudly into a massive grey block that Betty only belatedly realized was a cell phone.

"Oh my god," Veronica said from somewhere behind her.

The man turned. Betty would have recognized him from eyebrows alone, even though she'd never met him. For a second, she was astonished that the eyebrows were apparently a genetic inheritance. 

"Who's that?" Archie said.

"If not Blaine, then Steff," Reggie suggested.

Everyone stared at him.

"I watch a lot of old movies while I'm working out," he said, shrugging. "It lets me come up with new names to say to Jughead."

"Pity, since you're so much smarter when you don't speak," Jughead said.

Reggie made a movement like he would lunge at him, but something dark and leather-covered stepped out of the trees and intercepted him. A hand closed on Betty's shoulder. Betty shrieked. So did Val, and Veronica and Archie started indiscriminately whacking things. No -- not things. Bikers.

"Who do you have there, boys?" Hiram Lodge called out, as Betty and her friends were rounded up.

"No idea, boss," said one of the three holding onto Reggie.

"I thought you guys said the Greendale crocodiles were working with the Blossoms!" Archie said now.

"We're not those lowlife thugs," said the biker holding onto him. "We're the-- well. We don't have a name yet."

"Serpents," Jughead suggested tiredly.

"Hey," said his and Betty's assigned biker. "That's good!"

"Does every would-be maple heir in this town hire a biker gang to work for them?" Veronica said. She looked very unimpressed with the biker who was pinning her arms to her sides. "And do you guys just run to work for -- for the Hiram Lodges and Clifford Blossoms of the world?"

"Why shouldn't they?" Hiram Lodge said, strolling over to examine her. He seemed very taken with her, which Betty supposed made sense but was also completely creepy. 

"I pay them very well," Hiram informed his daughter. 

"Not every day you get paid in doubloons, boss," said the biker holding Val. "Thanks for that."

Hiram smiled at him in the same mischievous way his daughter did when she declared Archie Andrews boring. Problem was, the context here was completely different.

"Why would I want that useless old treasure?" he said. "Thanks to you boys and your backwoods ways of navigating the maple woods, I have something that will make Clifford Blossom kneel at my feet."

"Oh fuck," Veronica said. "You found the maple deed, didn't you?"


	7. Chapter 7

Several things happened at once.

First, Hiram Lodge proved he was very like Clifford Blossom, because he proposed the exact same plan. Namely, to lock them all in the old sugar house just before Andrews construction was scheduled to take a wrecking ball to it.

"I can't have anyone knowing I possess the maple deed!" he snapped. "Except for Clifford. Obviously. This is gonna kill Cliff."

Then Reggie overpowered his three bikers. Reggie was a big kid who worked out a lot, and those three bikers didn't know what hit them. Val had never liked Reggie, but she nevertheless found his chutzpah inspiring, so she bit her biker. Veronica attacked hers in the foot with a stiletto pump. Betty and Jughead teamed up on theirs. Archie elbowed his in the gut. 

Chaos for the second time that day.

"Take down the big one," Hiram snapped. "He's obviously the leader!"

"Right?" Reggie said, as he punched a biker in the face. But this meant that most of the bikers refocused on him, so then he added, "Hey, fuck you, Veronica's dad. I'm glad you're going to jail someday."

Hiram Lodge stared at him, so befuddled that a single glance at his expression distracted Val, and let her biker pin her to the ground. Above her, she caught sight of Archie trying to fight his way over and help her.

"No!" Val told him. "Go -- get out of here."

They couldn't all get locked in the sugar house. Somebody had to be left to rescue them. It was clear that the Riverdale teens of the 80s weren't the friendly rescue type. 

"Val's right!" Reggie shouted now. "It's like football, Andrews. Sometimes to win the game, you've gotta sacrifice the best players."

"That's chess, Reggie," Jughead said, unwilling to let a jibe at Reggie slide. But he pulled Archie away. By then Val was being manhandled up and dragged to the trunk of the cadillac, so she didn't get a good look at whoever else managed to escape.

Reggie definitely didn't, though, because once she was locked in the trunk she heard him giving his all for a good five more minutes.

Sadly, this didn't keep them out of the old sugar house. Soon enough, Val and Reggie found themselves tied up and forced into one of its many huge old maple sap vats. Reggie had also been gagged, because the newly-christened Serpents clearly reacted to anything Reggie had to say the same way everyone else did: with irritation.

Once they'd been dumped and the Serpents had vanished, Val said, "Kevin? Cheryl?"

Her voice bounced all around the vat. The acoustics here were wild.

"...Val?" Kevin said.

"You also in a maple vat?" Val said.

"Yeah. God, what a cliche," said Kevin. "You know, I don't even know that sugar houses need to have vats? It's like someone put them here just to have a place to keep hostages they might want to drown in sap and then boil alive."

There was a muffled sound like a gagged person trying to tell them something, but it was too far away to be Reggie.

"Did they gag Cheryl?" Val said.

"Of course they did. They met Cheryl," Kevin said. "I think she's trying to say that her family owns the sugar house, and American horror-movie gothic is just the Blossom family way."

The muffled sounds died off, so maybe that was exactly what Cheryl was trying to say.

"Hm. Can you make it out of your vat?" said Val.

"The top is three feet above my head and they tied me up, so no," Kevin said. "You?"

Val surveyed her vat in the gloom. She was in the same predicament as Kevin, only worse because her vat-partner was larger and he was trying to struggle out of his bonds, so he kept accidentally kicking her.

"Same," she reported. 

"Who's making that noise?" Kevin said.

"Reggie," Val said.

"They got Reggie?"

More frantic muffling.

"Cheryl wants to know if they got Veronica," Kevin said.

"No," Val said.

Relieved muffling.

"Cheryl has a crush on Veronica," Kevin said. "God, why is everyone gay now as opposed to, like, three years ago when I was coming out and could have used a little likeminded company?"

"I don't think Archie's gay," Val said. "I don't _think_. Maybe bi."

"What's your proof?" Kevin demanded. "Dish."

"Well, he seems to like me, but he's also written a lot of breakup songs about Jughead."

Reggie briefly paused in his struggles to make some muffled noises of his own, probably because he was furious that this moment had arrived, and yet here he was gagged and unable to made a snide comment about it.

"I know people think my friends group is weird," Val continued, because they did, because Josie was nothing if not too intense for most human beings, "but, um. Yours is a lot stranger. You seem like the only normal one."

But then Kevin said something that sounded suspiciously like, "I don't want to be normal; I want to have my date with a crack dealer." Val wasn't sure she heard right, though, because with one triumphant jerk against the side of their vat, Reggie produced a loud clang and also freed his feet.

"That was Reggie," Val reported. "I don't think we'll die. He might free himself before the wrecking ball gets here."

" _What_?" Kevin said. Cheryl produced a series of uunmmmfs that were probably also a 'what.'

"Andrews construction is scheduled to demolish this place today," Val explained. "So if we don't get out soon, then Archie's family might kill us."

Since this was Riverdale and Val felt she had to add, "Accidentally, though. Not for the maple fortune."

-

Archie, Betty, Jughead, and Veronica ran through the forest. Archie was the most athletic and should have been the fastest, but he wasn't in the lead because he kept dropping back to Jughead to say things like, "Jug -- Jug, you pulled me out of that."

"Of course I did," Jughead said, between panting breaths. "I wasn't going to let you get mauled by a biker."

Archie looked like he really-truly thought Jughead should have or would have. It was simultaneously painful and satisfying, and Jughead wished Archie would fix his face so that it could no longer inspire that emotional combination in people. Jughead couldn't focus on that while running. Running took a lot out of him.

"Girl, I'm in heels, but why are you so slow?" said Veronica, who was actually sprinting faster than him despite her four-inch stilettos.

"I'm very lazy," Jughead managed. "And I hate gym!"

When Betty (in the lead, and also still the leader) determined that they'd run far enough to stop, Jughead fell against the roots of a maple tree and just stayed there for a few minutes.

"When's his birthday?" Veronica asked. "Because I am going to get him a Crunch 24-hour fitness membership, I swear to god. Do they have Crunch in this town?"

"They don't have Crunch in the late 80s," Jughead said, while also scowling into the dirt because his entire body was on fire.

"Oh, that's not gonna get you out of it," Veronica said. 

"Guys, focus up," Archie said. "We have to find the sugar house before my dad and granddad turn into murderers. Betty, what's the plan?"

Jughead craned his neck up from the dirt to look at Betty. She looked primly pleased that Archie and Veronica were deferring to her so effortlessly. Jughead could have told her they would. Betty was the town heroine, whether she liked it or not, and deserved to lead the team. Not that leading their team was such a reward. It was, at bottom, a team of people from Riverdale and therefore very much a mixed bag.

Then Betty was looking at him. This puzzled Jughead. He tried to communicate that he didn't want to share leadership, but he suffered a wheezing spell.

"Cardio, girl," Veronica said. "At least a Zumba class."

And Betty said, "Jughead, you know this forest, right? You know it better than we do."

Technically he did. Only because, well, this was one of the forgotten parts of Riverdale, so it was where Riverdale's forgotten people went. People with money spent their weekends paying full-fare at the drive-in and movie theater, or enjoying fancy town hall celebrations meant to pay homage to Riverdale's incredible role in the maple cheese industry. People without money tagged the old ferris wheel or hung out in the creepy woods just one junk-filled ravine away from the bad side of town. 

I.E., right here.

Still, when he finally got his breath back, he said, "It's different now. The woods, the fairground. They used to be easier to get around in before the town forgot about them and tore down the old sugar house. More roads and stuff. In recent decades the Blossoms have let those roads grow over, and every year they have the rides moved around to disorient people."

"Why?" Archie said.

"They're the Blossoms. Do they need to have a reason to be creepy assholes?" Jughead said. "Does anyone in this town?"

No one contradicted him.

"But what do you remember about the original roads?" Betty said, after a minute. "More than one of those had to lead to the sugar house, right?"

He thought about it. Or at least he thought about wandering these woods with his dad and Jellybean as a kid, which was something he hadn't thought about in a long time. He couldn't remember his dad ever telling them where the sugar house was. But he could remember the way his dad had made a note of how you could mark the trees -- S. For part of the old spiderweb of roads, the whole thing symmetrical, every other road pointing to one spot right in the center. 

In the center of five thousand acres, though. There was no way they'd be able to make it on foot. Really, Jughead could have told all of them that there was no point in exploring on foot, except that the thought of actually exploring, with his friends, like this was two summers ago and they were all still the _same_ \--

He'd been a little bit seduced by it. Even though he'd had his own reasons for wanting to keep them all away from the fairground.

He flopped over.

"We have to find your dad," he said. "Andrews construction. Bulldozers. Trucks. They cover a lot of ground. They won't have come in on the carnival side, though, because the roads are in the way. There's a back entrance to the woods if you come in through the town junkyard. West of the carnival grounds. It's not far, I think."

He squinted at the sky to try and gauge direction and distance, but Betty beat him to it.

"That way, if it's west of the carnival," she said. "Come on."

Jughead's friends hauled him up. This time he ended up walking with Veronica, since they were the slow ones.

"You're Betty's best friend, right?" Veronica hissed, too low for Archie and Betty to hear.

Jughead stared at her. 

"I'm nobody's _best_ friend."

He had been Archie's, once upon a time. But then the not-fight had happened, so he'd slid somewhere down near second or third or fourth place, and now even Archie made a point to say his best friend was Betty. And before Veronica, Betty had always been more taken with Archie. So even if they were now feeling their way back to each other, Jughead still wasn't sure where he stood.

Veronica, though, was one of those people who always thought she was sure of everything.

"Please," she said, waving him off now. "You are. She likes Archie too much to really trust him with all her secrets. So while she's Archie's best friend, and Archie's yours -- since you're like, obsessed with him --"

"I am not," Jughead protested, but she talked over him.

"--you're _hers_ , even if she's too nice to tell Kevin that. Which is fine because Kevin and Cheryl can be my best friends--"

"Kevin and _Cheryl_? What happened to Betty?"

"Betty's going to be my girlfriend," Veronica said, like this should be obvious. "That's why we're talking? Normal teenagers don't talk about murder and maple fortunes, you know. They ask their girls' best friends for appropriate first date ideas." 

"She likes -- she likes truth and justice and the outdoors and milkshakes," Jughead said. "She's _Betty_."

Veronica stared at him like she thought he was hopeless. 

"Murder and the maple fortune are a lot more interesting than first date ideas," Jughead snapped. "And good luck getting Cheryl and Kevin to be normal."

"I already scheduled a shopping date with Cheryl," Veronica said smugly. "And as for Kevin, I'm toooootally going to help him score that crack-dealing drive-in criminal I think he likes."

Jughead's turn to stare at her.

"Oh," she said, after a second. "That last thing was just weird enough to be Riverdale-appropriate, wasn't it? Fuck."

As if to underscore this, they came upon the junkyard road right then. Archie, being Archie, had run out into the middle of it, holding out his arms.

"Stop!" he told the approaching bulldozers. "Stop! You're all going to become murderers."

In any other town, people would have assumed he was some kind of environmentalist. In Riverdale, this just meant that a grizzled old man with a red beard poked his head out of the nearest bulldozer and said, "Oh no, son. Don't worry. I talked Fred out of all of that. We're not here for the maple fortune."


	8. Chapter 8

Archie's grandpa Abner had died when Archie was two, so it was neat to meet him now. Especially since, like all the Andrews, Abner turned out to be reasonable. He halted all the bulldozers as soon as Betty explained about the four kidnapped teenagers in the old sugar house.

"This is exactly why that place needs to be town down," his grandpa said, after he'd climbed down to talk to them all face to face. "Fred and FP and that little Hermione Silva all got locked in there last week, just after the adventure with the old asylum."

"Old asylum," Veronica said.

"Mmhmm," said Abner. "Not to be confused with the new asylum where the town cult got sent to."

"Town _cul_ \-- oh, you know what? Nevermind," Veronica said.

"You all must be new to Riverdale," Abner said kindly. "All except you, son."

Archie assumed he meant him, but then he looked where Abner was pointing, and Abner didn't mean Archie. He meant Jughead.

"Me?" Jughead said, mystified.

"Sure," said Abner. "You've got a real Riverdale look. You look like one of my boys."

"One of your boys?" Archie said. "You just have the one."

Abner squinted at him. "I've got just the one son, sure, but FP's like my own, you know. FP! Get over here!"

Two people climbed down from the next bulldozer over. Archie would know the first one anywhere, even though his cheekbones were sharper and he had a lot more hair, in fact a glorious brown pompadour of it. And the second one did look a lot like Jughead. Probably because it was Jughead's father.

"Lot of families in this town are always fighting," Abner said now. "But not the Joneses and Andrews. We've never held with the maple feud. FP's as good as one of my own."

"Nah, not me, Abner," FP said, slouching forwards now. "I'm a junkyard rat."

"Shut up," Fred said, and punched him in the arm. 

Archie looked at Jughead. Jughead looked at Archie.

"I'm so sorry I told on your dad," Archie hissed under his breath. "I've always been sorry! I was sorry for months!"

"I know!" Jughead hissed back. "I didn't want you to be sorry! It's fine!"

But it wasn't fine, because in avoiding his friend, Archie had very-nearly created a feud where no feud had ever existed. The one part of Riverdale where, apparently, no feud had ever existed. And he knew that if he were back in the modern day, Fred would say something about how it wasn't his fault, but in this time Fred didn't look especially equipped to give anyone advice, since he was wrestling with FP and losing badly.

"You think Hermione's gonna let you take her to the dance if you get the maple fortune, pal?" FP was saying, laughing.

"Knock it off," Abner said fondly.

"About Hermione," Veronica said now, "I have some questions about Hermione. Mind if my girlfriend and I ride with you two to the sugar house?"

"Veronica," Betty said, looking back at Jughead and Archie. "Maybe we should let them ride with Fred and FP, and we can--"

"No, it's fine," Jughead said quickly.

Veronica nodded at him, like he was in on some plan of hers. Jughead promptly looked irritated, which was how Archie knew he wasn't. He just didn't want to ride with his dad. Or Archie's dad.

"Oh, so this girl's your friend?" FP said, looking admiringly at them both as he and Fred walked the girls to his bulldozer.

"No," Veronica said. "I said _girlfriend_. When a girl says it significantly like that, it means a girl she's in love with."

Betty went pink. Then she and Veronica were climbing into the second bulldozer, and Abner was waving Archie and Jughead into the cab of his own. It was cramped in there, but Archie and Jughead had done this with Fred enough times that they knew just where to stand and what to hold.

"We'll get those kids out before we take the place down, don't worry," Abner said, as he started down the road for the sugar house. "Heck, maybe we'll get them all back to their parents before we even do the job. We should get that place secured and make sure it's empty so none of you teenagers gets hurt."

Archie spared a second to be grateful that the Andrews clan was, for the most part, a bunch of relatively decent people who just kind of worked their normal jobs and definitely didn't want the maple syrup fortune. Then he focused in on the thing he should have been focusing in on months ago, instead of football and construction and Grundy, and even music.

Music was great, but music hadn't been his friend since the age of five.

"How have you been?" he asked Jughead carefully.

Jughead made a face.

"Betty already asked me that," he said. "Twice in one day. That's a lot for me."

"I should have asked you months ago," Archie said honestly. "And kept asking. I shouldn't have ruined things--"

Jughead picked one of his hands off of Abner's seat and put it in Archie's shoulder, drawing Archie in close. He didn't need to do that because Abner had put his ear plugs in, probably out of habit. But he did it anyway. Almost like they were hugging. 

"He ruined things," Jughead said now, almost too quickly for Archie to catch the words. "Okay? When he stole from you. He made a feud where there wasn't one. And I -- maybe I should have told _you_ that months ago. That it's FP's fault, not yours."

"I'm gonna hug you when we get out of this cab," Archie told him fervently.

"What, right in front of the sugar house?" Jughead said.

"In front of the whole goddamn maple forest," said Archie.

"Okay," Jughead said. "But do it before they let Reggie out, please."

Archie grinned. In the distance, they caught sight of a huge, rickety old cabin. The sugar house, probably. So they had a few minutes before everyone was back together again. Jughead probably wouldn't tell him anything once everyone was back together again.

So Archie said, "Seriously, how have you been? Are you okay? Is your family?"

Jughead seemed honestly surprised that he was still pursuing the question, and that made Archie feel like dirt for the second time that day.

"Things have been--been kind of rough," he said, dropping his hand from Archie's shoulder. 

"You should come over and we should talk about it," Archie said. "For real. My house. We'll get burgers from Pop's and we'll keep the date this time. Neither of us can back out."

Jughead opened his mouth, then thought the better of whatever he was obviously going to say. Probably something sarcastic.

"Okay," he said finally.

"I'll pay for the burgers," Archie said.

"I said okay. You don't need to bribe me," said Jughead. "Though I will accept that bribe."

Archie grinned so wide his face hurt.

By now, they were at the sugar house. There was someone there already. She was wearing very inappropriate heels for a person who'd probably spent all day hiking through a maple forest. In this, she was like her daughter. Otherwise she was more casually dressed, like Betty.

"Hermione!" someone shouted from behind them.

Veronica's mother looked up. She spread her hands out in front of the door to the sugar house, just the same way Archie had earlier.

"Don't you dare tear this sugar house down, Mr. Andrews!" she said. "There are at least three kids inside."

Abner pulled out his ear plugs.

"Four kids in there, Hermione!" he shouted.

"I know!" she shouted back. "Or -- I knew about three of them, because Clifford told me, and then Hiram told me he'd locked some other people up when I went back to Hiram."

By now the bulldozers had stopped and Fred jumped down, looking grim.

"I can't believe you scheduled two dates on the same day with the two worst people in town--"

"I scheduled two _investigative missions_ ," said Hermione. "So that snooty Alice Klump can stop telling people I don't pull my weight at the Blue and Gold."

"Was it worth it?" Fred said testily. "Do you know who the real heir to the maple syrup fortune is?"

Hermione opened her mouth.

"Nah, she doesn't," FP taunted, climbing down now himself. "She'll just end up doing an expose on the new manicure place at the mall."

Hermione closed her mouth, and then snapped, "Just help me lift this bar so that we can get the door open!"

FP did as bid, although he managed to be very sarcastic and disrespectful about it. But this at least got him out of range of the two girls still in the second bulldozer, which had to be good for him, since Veronica emerged looking thunderous.

"Your father is horrible," she told Jughead, when she reached the boys.

"I know," Jughead said, nodding. 

Betty, for her part, looked sad about something.

"Arch," she said, pulling him aside, "Did Jughead tell you about--"

A cheer went up from the Andrews construction crew. They'd managed to get the bar up, and Hermione was taking something out (of her bra -- it looked like?) to get the latch undone. Then several men brought out ladders, since it seemed all the kids were trapped inside the maple vats. After a few minutes, Kevin, Val, Reggie, and Cheryl emerged. Reggie swerved to Hermione as soon as he saw her, and they had a brief exchange Archie couldn't see that left FP looking very smug at Fred. 

"She's a flirt. Trust me, I bet it's Cliff or Hiram she likes," Archie heard FP tell his father.

"The worst!" Veronica repeated. "I don't understand how you can live with him!"

"I don't," Jughead said.

This wasn't the answer Archie was expecting, and he turned to ask about it, but then Val was walking up to him. He was relieved to see she looked mostly fine, though she was massaging her wrists like she'd been tied up.

"Hey!" Archie said. "You're okay!"

"I am, and we should get back to the carousel," she told the assembled group. "Unless we want to spend forever in the 80s. I want to exist _after_ No Doubt's classic Tragic Kingdom has been released, and Kevin apparently has a date he's missing."

To punctuate this, Kevin walked up now and said, "Hermione's going to drive us back in her car, guys. Veronica, thank fucking god your mother exists."

"Your mother is a godsend," said Cheryl, hobbling in his wake. "She saved me, Veronica, and in that moment I knew you and I were meant to be best friends. And, since we're so close now, you can have my body if you want."

"Oh no, that's okay," Veronica said. "I mean, we can totally be best friends, but I'm dating Betty now."

Cheryl squinted coolly at Betty but otherwise seemed placated by this. Archie, for his part, just wondered at how Hermione had had the foresight to bring her car _into_ the fairgrounds.

"Of course," Hermione said, when they'd all piled into her sporty convertible. "What -- you think I'm going to take to the trails in heels?"

She left them by the carousel, as requested. 

Everyone climbed on, and then they all waited for something to happen, and nothing did.

"Well, figure out what to do, Betty," Cheryl commanded.

Betty rolled her eyes. 

"I am not your monkey, Cheryl," she said. But she did approach the carousel's control box. She held out a hand to Veronica, who was sitting side-saddle on a nearby coyote, and Veronica handed her a hairpin without a word. Betty picked the lock on the box. Then, after coolly surveying it, she climbed in. Then she switched two wires, flipped a switch, and -- for good measure -- hit something.

The carousel began to move as soon as she'd swung herself back onto it. The music was so loud and overpowering it gave Archie a headache, or maybe that was the speed of it, the way the fairgrounds melted away completely. When it finally slowed, he felt like he was going to vomit.

But the sky was grey and autumnal again. At the open gate of the fairgrounds, just beyond the trees, a motorcycle roared, and then a boy in a South Side Serpents leather jacket rode up.

"Kevin!" he shouted. "I got your text. What are you doing in the haunted fairground?"

Kevin climbed off the carousel and ran to meet him.

"Oh, so _that's_ the hot crack dealer," Val murmured.

"Yep," said Veronica, like this was totally normal.


	9. Chapter 9

Jughead was getting ready to head out for the Andrews' house that night, as promised, when Betty and Veronica returned to the fairground. The rain was pounding on the tin roof above the bumper cars and, perhaps in deference to this, Veronica had changed into more sensible shoes. For Veronica. They were kitten heels and they matched her dramatic black cloak. Jughead squinted at her as she ran in Betty's wake, and tried to understand why she had dressed up even more just to come out here a second time.

Not that she needed a reason. She was _Veronica_.

"You weren't supposed to tell her," he told Betty reproachfully, once Betty had reached him.

Betty rolled her eyes.

"Oh, so I was supposed to just ignore the fact that you're living in an abandoned fairground?"

Veronica said, "I asked her what she wanted to do for our first date, and since she's Betty and she likes justice she said, 'rescue Jughead,' so here I am, because I'm an awesome girlfriend."

"We're also going to make out later," Betty added.

"Oh, totally," said Veronica.

Jughead tried to make sense of all of this. 

"I do not need rescuing," he said.

"Actually, yes, you do," Betty said, like he was being stupid. "Kev is planning to tell his dad that there's somebody living out here and that they might be connected to Jason's death, so you can expect Sheriff Keller to show up tonight. We're here to help you pack up and scrub away any evidence of your existence."

"Erasing evidence?" Jughead said. "That doesn't sound like Betty Cooper."

"I'm rubbing off on her," Veronica said, sounding delighted about it. Betty, for her part, looked pretty delighted too.

They made a frustratingly cheerful pair as they helped Jughead pack and clear all his things from the scene. Jughead guessed it had to be love, if only because nothing else explained how these two could have such a good time helping him haul his junk over the enormous iron fence in the rain. 

"You can just drop me off at Archie's, I guess," he said, once they were in Betty's dad's car. 

He wasn't sure how he was going to explain the backpack or the bedding or his bag of empty water bottles and other assorted trash, but he'd come up with something.

"No, no," Veronica said. "Text Archie. Tell him you'll be late. We're taking you to your new digs."

"What?" Jughead said.

Betty said. "You can't live in a fairground. And neither Veronica nor I can take you in. So I thought about where in this town you could possibly live while you figure your life out. And, Juggie, there's one place left that might work."

"Riverdale's absurdly well-stocked monster mansion of a public library," Veronica said. "The one that used to be main house of the original maple plantation, and that has a deaf-and-blind caretaker."

"Mrs. Littercritter is a librarian," Betty said. "But Veronica's right. The library has a kitchen in the back, and four bathrooms, and tons of decent places to sleep, and it can't be torn down because the original town founder apparently told the town we'd be cursed if anyone tried to destroy his house."

"But, like, nobody goes there anymore because public libraries are dying, which is a shame," Veronica said.

"Also nobody goes there because it's right between the ancient burial ground and the haunted hotel," Betty pointed out.

"I--" Jughead said. 

He thought about it. 

"Okay," he said finally. 

Nobody bothered them when they moved him in, because the only person there was the sweet old librarian, and she was deaf, blind, and fast asleep. Jughead selected a decent spot in a massive, unused fireplace with a chimney that had been bricked up years ago. It sat behind an ancient screen in the corner of a room devoted to books on East Asian furniture-making, where no one was likely to ever go, and so they set up his bed there. 

"Okay, we're off to make out," Betty said, once everything was arranged to her satisfaction: the bedroll, the water bottle, the Jughead.

"Text Archie and tell him you're still coming," Veronica instructed him. "You just have to wait for Reggie."

" _Reggie_?" Jughead said.

"Yeah," Veronica said, shrugging. "Reggie wanted to speak to you. So we told him you'd be in the library."

"It also works for you to live here because you hanging out in the library by yourself is a cover story everybody will believe," Betty said, clearly proud of herself. Then she seemed to reflect on what she'd said and added, "Er. Sorry."

"Thanks," Jughead said wryly. 

"You're welcome," Veronica told him. "Friends just get you. That's what they do."

She pulled Betty in for a kiss, because Veronica had more than a little bit of show-off in her. Then they said goodbye and left.

Jughead was left to wait for Reggie in the old, huge library, with its odd spiderwebbed windows and musty black curtains. This was the worst place to wait for Reggie, because it was exactly where Reggie would expect to find him. He strolled in about ten minutes after the girls had gone and said, "Hooo boy. Should've known you'd be here, Drop Dead Fred."

"What do you want?" Jughead said. "Why are you searching me out? We're not friends. We've hated each other since we were five."

Reggie said, "Correction, weirdo. We've hated each other since we were _four_ , and in preschool, and _I_ wanted to share blocks with Jason at dismissal time, and Clifford Blossom said Jason would be better off hanging with you, since you were a First Family kid."

"What?" Jughead said, confused.

He had no recollection of this. 

But Reggie held his hands up in peace gesture, like he thought Jughead was playing dumb.

"Listen, man, water under the bridge," he said. "Turns out I'm from a first family too, so fuck the Blossoms. And I'm just here to let you know that I know, okay?"

"You know what?" Jughead asked slowly.

Reggie grinned.

"Playing dumb. Alright. Alright. I get it. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes, with the way this town hunts after the maple fortune, so I get it. And I won't be telling a soul. But I did have to give you this."

He handed Jughead an ancient, yellowed piece of paper. Jughead barely glanced at it.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Jughead said.

"I don't know," Reggie said. "I'd burn it if I were you. I got it from Veronica's mom. Man, she's hot, but what a shady lady. Turns out she stole it from Veronica's dad, but then she didn't want _your_ dad to have it, so she gave it to me and told me she'd date me if I would get it out of town. But I don't think she was being legit. I think she just picked me because, one, I'm handsome, and two, she obviously didn't realize I would have a stake in the whole maple deal."

Since none of those words made any more sense than his earlier words, Jughead continued to stare at him in silence. 

Reggie clapped his hands on Jughead's shoulders without warning. Jughead stiffened, since this was possibly the most horrifying thing to happen to him all day.

Reggie said, "Stake or no stake, feuds are stupid. And maybe deadly. So, like I said, my lips are sealed. I never saw that piece of paper."

Then he let Jughead go and strolled away with a cursory, "Later, Teen Witch."

Only then did Jughead actually look at the piece of paper. After he looked at it, he texted Archie (again) to tell him he was running late (again). He hunted around the library for a fireplace that wasn't boarded up or blocked, but didn't find one. He did find a paper shredder, so he fed the piece of paper into the shredder. Then, for good measure, he turned on one of the burners in the librarian's tiny break kitchen and burned up the shreds.

He did, briefly, consider writing the original maple heir into his novel. Banastre 'Spider' Jones, terror of the high seas, founder of the town, murdered by all the other first families, and apparently a distant ancestor.

Considering all the murder, he decided against it.

He walked to Archie's. Archie was waiting for him on the stoop. He bounded up as soon as he saw, overjoyed.

"You came!" he said. "I'm glad. My dad and I were worried you weren't going to show."

Jughead glanced behind him, and smelled the burgers, and saw the warm, rosy glow of Fred Andrews' kitchen, possibly the most under-used and yet welcoming kitchen in town.

Jughead told Archie, completely honestly, "I'm glad we're hanging out. I needed something normal."

**Author's Note:**

> Show: persists in keeping Jughead homeless, fails to acknowledge the clear chemistry between Betty and Veronica.  
> Me: this is NONSENSE. maybe I will spend EVERY WEEKEND fixing this FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.


End file.
